President Obama salutes WTO, says small businesses are big winners

President Barack Obama praised the World Trade Organization on Sunday morning for striking its first fully multilateral trade deal in its nearly 20-year history. Small businesses would be among those to benefit most, the president said.

The WTO overcame two major challenges from India and a group of Latin American countries led by Cuba before reaching a deal on Saturday, in Bali, Indonesia, that is expected to generate as much as $1 trillion in global economic output.

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“This new deal, and particularly the new trade facilitation agreement, will eliminate red tape and bureaucratic delay for goods shipped around the globe,” Obama said in a statement from the White House. “Small businesses will be among the biggest winners, since they encounter the greatest difficulties in navigating the current system. By some estimates, the global economic value of the new WTO deal could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

“The WTO’s Bali agreement also represents the rejuvenation of the multilateral trading system that supports millions of American jobs and offers a forum for the robust enforcement of America’s trade rights. As such, we are proud of the United States’ leadership role in reaching this accord and congratulate WTO Director-General Roberto Carvalho de Azevêdo and our fellow WTO members on this achievement.”

The biggest element of the “Bali package” is a trade facilitation agreement that would make it easier and cheaper to move goods around the world by cutting red tape and improving customs procedures. Besides boosting trade, the pact could reduce corruption by eliminating opportunities for customs officials to extract bribes to get goods across border.

The deal also includes agriculture provisions that encourage the elimination of export subsidies and better administration of tariff-rate quotas. The new rules are intended to encourage more imports under the quotas, though the United States is expected to opt out because they would not apply to large developing countries such as China.

United States Trade Representative Michael Froman, who was instrumental in helping to get the WTO deal finalized, has now taken his team of negotiators to Singapore to continue the Obama administration’s efforts at completing a 12-country Pacific Rim trade deal.